In the meantime I've been trying to get chrome working with unattended upgrades, however I'm also running into roadblocks there as well. I've set it up per this page:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/64318/how-can-i-enable-silent-automatic-updates-for-google-chrome however I still have no succes...actually unattended ugrades don't run at all whether it's Chrome or Ubuntu updates...
Also configured /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic and set the appropriate apt configuration options:
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
